


to break our bones for kindling

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [19]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Docember 2018, F/M, In a medical context, injuries, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: War has a way of breaking things. When Doc & Rea shatter themselves on different sides of the front, the jagged puzzle pieces of their hearts don't always fit neatly back together.





	to break our bones for kindling

Wounded pour in by the dozens, filling every tent with blood and bodies and the sickly sweet stench of death. Doc knows that stench like he knows the smell of caf or the bouquet of his favorite cologne. He knows it like he knows the scent of the Alderaanian spice cakes his father always buys for his birthdays.

 

It never did stop turning his stomach.

 

“We’ve got more incoming!” A voice bellows over the intercom, over agonized moans and helpless sobs and shouted orders. The tent flaps tear open seconds later and another stream of stretcher-laden, battleworn soldiers pour into the already overcrowded space.

 

Doc passes his tools to the nurse across the table from him, saying, “You’ve got it from here, handsome. Seal her up.” He resists the urge to wipe his sweaty brow and strip the gloves, slick with viscous green blood, from his hands. He tosses them in the bin and slips on a fresh pair from the repository beside it. His eyes scan the wounded, looking for familiar faces. Prays to the Force that he won’t find any.

 

To his relief, the faces are all new. One of the wounds, though, is  _ painfully _ familiar.

 

“Over here!” He waves at the soldiers hoisting the stretcher between them, eyes locking on the burned edges of a laceration he wishes he didn’t recognize immediately. The kid’s uniform is the plain, unadorned grey of Imperial enlisted. He tries not to wonder whether that enlistment was voluntary or not; you can never really know with the Empire types.

 

The kid’s split open from neck to navel. One long, narrow slice that’s almost elegant in its efficiency. He might have admired the craftsmanship—the very  _ familiar _ craftsmanship—if he wasn’t the one who had to separate melted synthetic fiber from melted organic flesh.

 

He pushes the thought to the back of his mind and goes to work.

 

# # #

 

Thirty more casualties pour in before she finally shows up. Smeared from head to toe with ash and dirt and blood, her jaw is clenched and forehead wrinkled in one of her rare frowns. Only one lightsaber dangles from her hip.

 

Her eyes find him almost immediately, and his heart stutters as she catches him up in the bright blue of her gaze, threatening to unravel him then and there.

 

Doc chokes down the swell of conflicting emotions and turns his eyes back to his patient. Back to the burned tissue and severed organs, to the shallow, rattling breaths and the too-slow oozing of blood beneath his fingers. “Suction,” he says, and the nurse obliges.

 

Then Rea is there beside him. He doesn’t want her here. Not now. Not while he’s stitching together a kid that she—

 

Either she doesn’t notice or she doesn’t care. It’s hard to tell with Rea. She’s at his side, one hand on his shoulder and another on the kid she nearly killed. The kid she was meant to kill. Doc may not be able to sense the Force, but he knows the rush of energy surging through him like he knows his own name. He knows the feel of her power, the shape it takes when it weaves its way inside of him, renewing him.

 

“What else can I do?” She asks.

 

This is the fourth day of the offensive. The fourth day of bombs and blaster fire and kids younger than Kira with craters the size of Nar Shaddaa in their chests. The fourth day of endless surgery and exhaustion and pumping their own nurses for blood. Of power outages and nutrient rations and using torn up shirts for bandages.

 

This is the fourth day of death, and even Doc can only take so much.

 

His fingers are slick with ruby-red blood and the lungs beneath them are gurgling through shallow wisps of breath. This isn’t a life he’s sure he can save and he knows the face of the person who took it. Knows it as well he knows his own. Sometimes wonders if he could maybe lo—

 

He has to focus. Has to save this kid.

 

Doc clenches his jaw and shrugs her hand from his shoulder. “I think you’ve done enough,” he says.

 

Her silence is heavy, and he misses the weight of it when she leaves.

 

# # #

 

He’s too tired to be angry when the message comes through his comm. He’s too tired to feel anything. 

 

There are limits to the human body. To his. Even to Rea’s.

 

“She just collapsed,” the nurse is explaining, her voice fluttering with anxiety. She wrings her hands behind her back, all six of her eyes flitting to anywhere but him. “She wouldn’t let us check for injuries and she refused to rest. We asked! I don’t know—“

 

But he does. He knows exactly what happened. He’s seen it so many times now. “Give her fluids and a sedative. Keep an eye on her blood pressure, but don’t worry too much about it. She’ll be fine.” He pats the nurse’s shoulder in what he hopes is a reassuring way. Nobody likes the idea of a Jedi dropping on their watch. “I gotta get back to it. My dance partner’s the impatient type.”

 

“Should we give her kolto?” The nurse calls after him.

 

“Not enough to spare,” he shouts the answer over his shoulder. “She’ll be fine.”

 

_ Please let her be fine. _

 

Something tightens in his chest.

 

# # #

 

It’s one thing when it’s Sith. When they have lightsabers and can bend nature to their will with a gesture. When they can snap a mind in half with a look. It’s one thing when they can fight back. When they’re a threat.

 

But most of the time they aren’t. Most of the time, they’re just soldiers. People like him, with mass-produced armor that might stop a blaster bolt, but will split like silk beneath a lightsaber. People who don’t have a prayer in the galaxy of standing against her.

 

“It’s my job,” she explains, even though he hasn’t asked. Even though Doc’s just checking the wound she pretended not to have in total, unquestioning silence. “It’s not like I’m proud of it. It’s not like I even wanted to do it. But we both know someone has to and--Well it’s better that it’s me. I can take it.” 

 

Her pulse is setting a frantic tempo for his instruments, beeping rapidly into the close, empty room. They might be stacking wounded three high out in post-op, but Jedi still rate private rooms. He can’t decide how to feel about it, so he’s trying not to feel anything.

 

“I’m not asking you to like it, but I won’t apologize for it and I won’t quit,” she goes on. He’s noticed that she doesn’t care much for quiet. “I tried to warn you about this back on Balmorra. I told you exactly how it would be, told you exactly what kind of person I am.”

 

He doesn’t call her on the blatant lie. He isn’t sure if she even realizes the untruth of it. He’s learned that Rea has all these ideas about herself, about the kind of person she is. She’ll talk for hours about her sins and her failures. She’ll warn anyone who listens how she’s just a weapon, how she’s cut glass and getting too close will only get you hurt.

 

She never mentions things like working herself unconscious in a field hospital, trying desperately to heal the people she hurt and the people she couldn’t protect. She doesn’t talk about how these wounded weigh on her, how she carries every life she’s ever touched around on her shoulders. How she never seems to bend beneath all that weight.

 

Rea talks a lot about her coldness and her cruelty and her mistakes. She never says a word about her strength. About her integrity. About the tenderness of her heart.

 

She never said a word about how she’d let a man stomp all over her if that’s what it took to keep him moving forward. She never told him she’d break herself to carry someone who was struggling.

 

Maybe if she’d been honest with him, he would’ve jumped ship ages ago. Maybe he’d have had the good sense to get out while he still could, before he could get tangled up in all this longing and respect. In this trust and warmth and passion. Maybe he would never have gotten in this deep.

 

Doc ties off the bandage around her ribs and admits to himself that he can’t really blame her for any of this. Harder still, he admits that he doesn’t want to. He takes her hand in his, not quite looking her in the eye but not quite looking away either, and says, “Everyone has their limits, Gorgeous.”

 

“I know.”

 

“There’s only so much death and destruction a man can take. I guess four days of casualties is flirting with my limit.”

 

She nods, but he can’t bring himself to look at her face. Can’t bring himself to see if there’s any hurt in her eyes. “It isn’t going to get better,” she says.

 

He swallows. “I know.”

 

“It’ll probably just get worse.”

 

He takes a breath. Squeezes her fingers. He doesn’t have to look at her to see the wall she’s putting up between them, to see the layers of permacrete growing higher and higher around her heart. It’s a game he’s played dozens of times before, and he doesn’t care much for being on this side of it. “I know,” he says.

 

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Doc. You don’t have to stay.”

 

He finally turns his gaze to hers. Lets himself plummet into the bright blue pools of her bloodshot eyes.

 

“I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  
  



End file.
